Shadows in the Snow
by Quick-n-Popular
Summary: Jeffrey Spender,exAgent of the FBI, now a PI, is called by a contact about a kidnapped woman whose history and resemblance bares that of Samantha Mulder. Now, Jeffrey, along with Scully and Byers must untangle the truths from the lies.


**The X-Files: Shadows in the Snow**

By **_Quick-n-Popular_**

Disclaimer: "The X-Files" is the sole property of Chris Carter. I own only this story I've created.

Note: This story takes place during the Ninth Season but ignores episodes "Closure" from season seven and "William" from season nine. Mulder is still in hiding.

Chapter One: A Man without a place

Monday, July 18th 12:40 PM Somewhere in West Virginia

Ex-Agent Jeffrey Spender, sitting in his unfinished, puny, apartment; he sat, staring vacantly out the window. The summer's wind rustled leafs outside, giving a very low-key sound. Taking a bottle of Wild Turkey, he pours himself a glass while humming the theme to Bonanza. Drinking down the alcoholic-cure, he winces as it passes through his body. After setting down the empty glass, he absentmindedly touches a spot on his chest and brushes the scar of the entrance wound he had obtained three years ago.

Jeffrey had never considered himself lucky, as most people would who have been nearly shot to death. If it hadn't been for a lost, fresh out of Quantico, Agent, finding him; Jeffrey knew that his father's mark would have killed him. However, recovery was bittersweet. The chance to live again, ever more so. He really didn't have a lot of options. A.D. Kersh, after Spender walked out on their meeting and suggesting that Mulder and Scully be reinstated into the X-Files, dismissed him rather quickly. The fact that he had been shot had seemed incidental, regardless of it happening in the Bureau's building.

Jeffrey chuckled at that thought. _The Bureau, _where no one was really in charge. There was no one there you could really trust; everyone was up for sale. Well, at least, no one you could trust _who_ was already trustable. Mulder and Scully seemed to be the only acceptation.

Having left the Bureau, spending a month in recovery, Jeffrey Spender kept to his love of investigating and obtained a license in private investigation. It was, in his opinion, the only honest work anyone could do where they weren't compromised or corrupted by those in power over them; where someone could be their own man.

It has been three years since he set himself up. The cases have been less than plentiful, opposed to what he had when he was a FBI Agent, but they were gratifying in the sense that they came from normal problems.

Looking at his wristwatch, he noted that he would need to leave very soon to meet a client at the Roosevelt Hotel. Drinking the last of the driblets of his whiskey, Jeffrey grabbed his coat and headed out the door.

12:55 PM Roosevelt Hotel

Sitting at the bar, glancing at his watch every so often, Jeffrey looked over his shoulder for the person he was meant to meet with. As to who it was, was a mystery. The person's voice over the phone was automated and the person said it was a necessity because they were afraid of being watched, surveyed, and being compromised. Knowing the workings of those with power, Jeffrey didn't laugh at this. They agreed to meet at the Hotel where he said he had information, sensitive information, regarding a kidnapping. Jeffrey knew that is wasn't in his place to investigate something as this and that it should be handled by either the local police or the Bureau, however, the man did say on the phone that it was something that he felt the Bureau couldn't be trusted with. Whoever it was that told Jeffrey that to meet him here wasn't exactly being punctual.

A slumped man, looking to be that is his late-sixties, shuffled over to the bar. He sat on the stool next to Jeffrey, but didn't make any eye contact, only frequent glances at Jeffrey and over his shoulder.

"Jeffrey Spender?" He muttered.

Jeffrey nodded.

The man continued not looking at him directly and he slipped his hand into the inside of his brown trench coat.

Jeffrey acted instinctually to his gun at his side, but withdrew his hand as he saw the man removing a large manila folder and slid it across the counter to him.

While Jeffrey took it, the man ordered a martini and sipped noisily.

Jeffrey looked inside which revealed photos of several men brutally shot in several places sprawled on carpeted floor of a room. The last photo was that of a woman with long dark hair, a warm smile displayed on her face.

Jeffrey felt his whole body stiffen as the eyes and smile reminded him of something. What that was, he didn't know.

"Is this the person who was taken?" Jeffrey asked, quietly, as to not draw any attention from the bartender or the other patrons.

The man nodded. "That's my daughter, Denise."

Jeffrey nodded, "Have the police found anything?"

The man shrugged, "Yes and no. They found bloody, size-ten and a half, foot tracts; other than that, there wasn't anything else."

"Any reasons for them wanting to take her?" Jeffrey asked.

The man polished off his drink and made a notion to the bartender to get him another. He sighed, "I'm an ex-Navy Seal. I've been specialized with surveillance equipment and have done numerous tours where I had to listen in. At our house, I found many high-tech devices that I have never seen before. Cameras in the smoke detector, bugs in the sofa cushions, a data recorder on the modem of my laptop; all over the past twenty-two years; none of it makes sense to me, nor did it to Denise."

Jeffrey sighed, "You haven't answered my question, sir. Despite what's going on at your home, is there anyone you know that would do this?"

The man shook his head, "Nobody."

Jeffrey looked back to the photos and carefully had them imprinted in his head to memory, as well as the face of Denise.

Jeffrey thanked him and left the bar and exited the Hotel. He had absolutely no idea on where to start. He knew that if he went to the crime scene that he'd be turned away by the police, even if he stated that he was investigating a missing persons case; the damn place in this area were very territorial.

There was a person he could turn to, although her listening to him would be a long shot. However, her resources were better than his.

1:34 PM Quantico, West Virginia, FBI Training Academy

Jeffrey Spender looked at the training grounds with a solemn expression. He remembered vividly the training he had the ambition that had once fueled him to be better than anyone else. Armed with only the drive to go further than anyone had, he was impeccably well accomplished during his training. All his teachers, instructors, and superiors had thought well of him and thought of him as a person striving to become an Assistant Director or higher up the chain. Looking back, Jeffrey wasn't sure as to where his goals actually were headed.

Being escorted through one of the long corridors, on both sides a chainlinked fence overlooking the outer environment and the field trainings being conducted. On one side, various mock structures of residences where Agents-in-training simulated arriving to the scene and on the other side, rigorous obstacles.

The guard showed Jeffrey into the main building and pointed him to the Forensic Science Class.

Looking through the rectangular glass in the door, Jeffrey watched as Agent Dana Scully taught her students.

He opened the door and proceeded down stadium seats until he found a vacant one.

Scully seemed to either not to have seen him or was too preoccupied with the lesson about molecular biology and what the trainees needed to look for at crime scenes.

Jeffrey knew that this was a big risk asking her to help him. He was hoping that due to his awakening-to-the-fact of his father's heavy-handed, insidious, dealings, and the recommendation to Kersh that both her and Mulder be both reinstated and put back on the X-Files, that he would at least get some leeway. He had told Mulder and Scully as to who it was that had attempted to kill him, but he wasn't entirely sure whether or not they believed him.

Sitting with the students, watching her teach, Jeffrey remembered being surprised, upon hearing from the few friends he had made at the Bureau, that she was reassigned to teaching at the Academy, but not so much that Mulder had been let go.

"Remember, that the simplest thing, or things, overlooked in any investigation is a door for a suspect to makes their escape." She finished, just as the bell rang. The students got up from their seats and made their way out as Scully went to the chalkboard and cleared away the information she had written out.

Jeffrey got up from his seat and walked down the stairs to her. It wasn't long until she knew he was there.

"Agent Spender."

Jeffrey shook his head, "Not anymore. Remember, Kersh let me go."

Scully nodded, "Sorry, old habits die hard. What can I do for you, Mr. Spender?"

Jeffrey took the folder he had under his arm and held it out for her.

"I'm now working as a private investigator and one of my clients had this for me. It's a kidnapping of his daughter."

Scully took the folder and took a deep breath before opening it. Her green eyes looked at the photos with the focus of that of a microscope, as to her medical and FBI training issued her to evaluate everything carefully.

She looked up, "This seems more for someone at the police or the FBI to investigate, not a PI."

Jeffrey nodded, "That's what I told him. He's a very paranoid man, doesn't trust government officials, or the police, for that matter. He thinks that he's under surveillance at his home and that's someone's interest in him, and his family, probably led to his daughter's abduction."

"Who are the dead?" Scully asked.

"They're friends. They were having a party, apparently. Whoever this man is only received a blow to the head."

Scully looked at Jeffrey, skeptically. "They killed their friends, but left him alone? Is there some ransom to be made?"

Jeffrey shrugged, "I honestly can't say. I can't talk to the police about this because I'd be interfering."

"What I can't understand is why you're taking this case. What's your interest in this, Mr. Spender?" Scully set the folder down and crossed her arms, looking very pointedly at Jeffrey.

Jeffrey sat himself down on one of the stools that lay near the polished lab table set in the middle of the arena where Scully taught. He sighed.

"You'll think I'm crazy." Just as the last words left his lips, Jeffrey knew what Scully's reaction would be.

Her eyebrows raised, her small mouth curving to that of an amused smile; Scully waited for him to continue.

"I…I think I know her from somewhere."

Scully shrugged, "Well, that's not surprising. Many faces trigger a certain familiarity in our minds, whether we actually know them or not."

"I need your help, Scully. I need background information on her, Denise."

"Denise, what?" Scully asked, taking the folder and looking at it again.

Jeffrey shrugged, "I don't know. The man wouldn't even give me his name, let alone the last name of his daughter."

"Well, that's a little odd, don't you think, Mr. Spender?"

Jeffrey nodded.

Scully sighed and handed him back the folder. "I'm sorry, I can't help you. Anything I dig up, I have to remark as to whom I'm getting it for. I'm already dangling on a thin thread as it is."

Jeffrey nodded, got up, muttered "Thanks" and began to leave.

"Wait." Scully said outloud.

Jeffrey turned back to her. Scully walked up to him and handed him a torn piece of paper with some writing on it.

"They might help you."

Jeffrey's knowledge of the Lone Gunmen was small. Other than hearing some of their messages on Mulder's answering machine and the few things his father told him about them, he didn't really know all that much.

Names were the only other thing that he knew. Melvin Frohike, Richard "Ringo" Langley, and John Fitzgereald Byers; three men consumed by their drive and the suspicions of the country that they lived in, lived like cyber-monks within their puny one floor apartment complex.

Jeffrey approached the door to their room and took notice of the whirring of a camera above his head. Jeffrey knocked several times against the door.

"Yes?" Said an electronic voice.

"Scully sent me." Jeffrey replied.

There was a pause, then a series of rattling, clanking and metal scraping against metal as the locks came undone and the door came open.

A man of at least a year or two younger than Jeffrey came from the door. His neatly combed hair, neatly trimmed beard, and a suit that could've professed him to be something other than a conspiracy theorist; made him one of the better looking of the trio.

"Mr. Spender, come on in." He said.

Jeffrey walked in and was welcomed by the smell of something cooking on the stove. The familiar sounds came behind him as the man was locking the door back up. The room was filled with hangings of various, and miscellaneous, information gathered by this man and his compatriots. Hanging by clothesline pinned everywhere imaginable, and lay scattered all over the tabletops were their self-publicized newspaper with their pseudonym as the title head.

The man brushed by Jeffrey and went to their miniscule kitchen where he had pasta boiling on the stovetop. After stirring, he covered it and joined up with Jeffrey.

"Mr. Spender, I'm John Byers, Scully tells me you need help?"

Jeffrey looked around, "Where's the other two?"

"They're on a mission with an associate of ours and won't be due back in some time."

Jeffrey nodded and gave Byers the folder he had presented Scully not too long ago.

Byers took it and opened it up and took out the photo of Denise.

"This is the person you need information on?"

Jeffrey nodded, "Everything you can get, actually."

Byers nodded and walked back behind a monstrous web of computer cords, monitor screens, and towers. Jefrey followed him and found Byers scanning the photo and clicking rapidly on the keyboard in front of him.

Jeffrey managed to find a chair and removed the stacked papers on it and placed it next to Byers as he was going through complex codes, hacks, and cripts while he went through screen to screen.

"Let me guess," Jeffrey stated, "You're hacking through the N.C.I.C Database?"

Byers smiled, "One of the easiest things out there to get through."

He soon reached an online menu from the Database and an option to scan a photo appeared. Byers clicked it and the humming sound of the scanner came alive, followed by the light streaking back and forth from the crack.

A "now processing, please wait" wording appeared followed by a rotating, miniature hourglass. After a minute or so, the screen changed with a similar photo of Denise.

"Denise Jacob Townsend. Daughter of Irene and Peter Townsend." Byers stated, reading the screen outloud.

Jeffrey wrote down on a small flip pad and looked up, "Anything else?"

Clicking and taking them to an additional screen, Byers nodded. "She's adopted."

"Where's she from originally?" Jeffrey asked, his mind was still reeling with how he might know this woman. Maybe, perhaps, from where she was before.

"That's going to take some time." Byers said as he began another round of typing and rigorous mouse movement.

"I think it'll help." Jeffrey stated.

Byers nodded and continued on with the work.

Thirty minutes later, Byers shouted, "Found it."

Jeffrey pulled himself away from one of the enigmatic storylines he was reading of the Lone Gunmen and walked back over to Byers.

Byers scrolled down the screen, reading as he did, and finally stopped at a point where he leaned his head forward, his face full of shock and disbelief.

Jeffrey seemed to catch it. "What is it?"

Byers mumbled something and then got up out of his seat and hurried to the phone. He nearly pounded it with his finders; the head set shaking in his hand.

Jeffrey looked back to the screen and read down to the point where Byers left off. It stated that Denise Townsend was from Modesto, California till she was fourteen years old, after that there was a large chunk of time missing. Jeffrey vaguely remembered growing up near there with his mother before they moved to Baltimore. He heard Byers talking and turned his attention to the shaken man.

"S-Scully. It's Byers. I…I think you need to get down here and see something. Yes, it does need your attention and it can't wait. It…It involves Agent Mulder's sister."

**_To be continued…_**

**A/N**: I'm hoping this gets a lot of attention so I can continue. It'll depend on what the reviews are and, hopefully, they'll be more than two. I need three to continue on, guys.

_**Q-n-P**_


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